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Why they call Tim Tebow the ‘Mile High Messiah’

Even before Tim Tebow led Sunday’s improbable fourth-quarter comeback by the Denver Broncos, the quarterback labeled the “Mile High Messiah” was confounding his critics and drawing renewed attention to his mystique.

“He is making people wonder if they should try to believe things they don’t actually believe,” wrote Chuck Klosterman at Grantland.com.

The country’s largest newspapers are both puzzling over and paying homage to Tebow – and not just on their sports pages.

“He is a charismatic journeyman quarterback who cannot throw reliable forward passes, yet has run up (literally) a 6-and-1 record for the Denver Broncos after being summed in desperation from the bench,” observed a Sunday editorial in The New York Times.

“He resembles Rodin’s Thinker more than a humbled pilgrim,” the Times said of Tebow’s now-famous after-touchdown ritual of going to one knee and pressing his fist to his forehead.

Tebow’s gesture has inspired a Web site – tebowing.com – that allows people to recreate the quarterback’s signature pose against all manner of backdrops – the Taj Mahal, underwater, at rock concerts -- and post them online.

“Can God take credit for the victories of a thick-set NFL quarterback who scrambles in a weirdly jittery fashion, throws one of the ugliest balls in the game, completes fewer than half of his passes and has somehow won six of team’s last seven games?” asks Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni.

Tebow provided an answer after Sunday’s win in which last-minute mistakes by the Chicago Bears contributed to yet another Broncos fourth-quarter comeback.

Bruni sympathizes with fans put off by “a sort of a self-righteous bait-and-switch – you come for scrimmages and he subjects you to scriptures” but concluded the intensity of derision aimed at Tebow has been unwarranted, especially given the conduct of the NFL’s array of felons.

A more thorough examination of ‘the Tebow thing” was in the Wall Street Journal, which devoted a section-front feature to him.

“Mr. Tebow continues to defy his critics – and to embody the anxieties over religion that are dividing today’s sports world and embroiling fans alike,” the journal said. “Can he really mean it when he says that football isn’t that important to him, that he cares more about transcendent things?”

A Washington Post piece explained that, the words most often used to describe Tebow are “modest,” “genuine,” “leader” and, of course, “winner.”

“The anti-Kardashian, he nevertheless sits at the pinnacle of pop culture, sports and religion right now, and there may never have been anything quite like him before.”

Oh, my.

Tebow has been great for ticket and merchandise sales, even among many who have only a slight interested in football. That is likely to intensify.

On Sunday, the New England Patriots and marquee quarterback Tom Brady face the Broncos. The NFL is being criticized for slotting the 4:15 p.m. game for regional broadcast on CBS rather than on prime time on NBC.

For those who may be newly interested in Tebow, the WSJ recounted how the University of Florida’s Heisman Trophy winner became well known for spending his summers helping the poor and needy in the Philippines, speaking in prisons and accepting every opportunity to volunteer.

Mr. Tebow's acts of goodwill have often been more intimate. In December 2009, he attended a college-football awards ceremony in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The night before, at another gala at Walt Disney World Resort, he met a 20-year-old college-football fan named Kelly Faughnan, a brain-tumor victim who suffers from hearing loss and visible, continual tremors. She was wearing a button that said "I love Timmy." Someone noticed and made sure that the young woman had a chance to meet the player.

Mr. Tebow spent a long while with Ms. Faughnan and her family, and asked her if she'd like to be his date for the award ceremony the following night. She agreed, and the scene of Mr. Tebow escorting the trembling young woman down the red carpet led much of the reporting about the event.